The Food Crisis

Reports of food shortages, food riots, and dwindling stockpiles have burst into the media in recent weeks, though warnings have been around for some time that diminishing farmland, climate change, and more recently the diversion of cropland to biofuels, would inevitably collide with growing populations, growing wealth, and the growth of grain intensive meat eating.

With consumption outstripping growth for six of the past seven years, grain stockpiles have fallen to their lowest levels since world wide record keeping began in 1960. In the United States, wheat stockpiles are at 60 year lows.

Rice has been particularly hard hit. Two years of severe drought in Australia, formerly a major rice exporter, have virtually eliminated the country's rice crop, while a plant disease has cut production in Vietnam. Since rice is the major source of food for many of the world's poor, these losses have had serious consequences.

Food riots have already toppled the government of Haiti. Shortages and price increases have caused unrest in India, Egypt, Indonesia, Peru, Haiti, Pakistan, Thailand, Burkino Faso, and Mauritania. The World Bank estimates that 33 countries face possible social unrest because of increasing food and energy prices. The U.N. proclaims that we are entering a new era of hunger.

The food and energy crises are unfolding in very similar ways; prices are rising in the world's richer countries while the poorer countries are experiencing shortages. Part of the problem comes from growing control over world food production by a handful of multinational corporations which is magnifying the problems in poorer countries. These corporations have chased indigenous peoples off their lands in South America, Indonesia and parts of the Far East, using tactics that range all the way up to murder. Jungle and rain forest land has been slashed and burned to make way for new plantations.

People in richer nations spend a smaller portion of their income on food so they are not as impacted by price rises. However they will not be immune from the problem indefinitely. The U.S. food supply is vulnerable in the event of disaster. Most of the nation's grain supply is shipped around the country on only two railroads, while little is stored in the event of disaster.

In both the cases of food and energy, the country has been asleep to the serious problems that loom ahead.

Peak Minerals

Peak oil is slowly seeping into the public consciousness, although it hasn't yet gotten the recognition that global warming has. Dramatic increases in food prices have brought the issues of food scarcity and trade offs between food and biofuels to the fore. But the production capacity for other minerals has not been studied extensively.

Now an Australian study by Dr Gavin Mudd in conjunction with the Mineral Policy Institute has taken an exhaustive look at Australain mining data and given some hard statistical evidence for peak production of minerals.

The report, the first to ever compile quantitative evidence on various mining trends, shows that ore grades continue to decline, solid wastes are increasing exponentially, and economic resources for many key strategic minerals such as coal and iron ore appear to have plateaued; some minerals such as gold and copper have gradually increased over time but this is proving harder to maintain as ore grades decline and deposits move deeper.

Another study by Ugo Bardi and Marco Pagani of the University of Florence, Italy, examined the world production of 57 minerals reported in the database of the United States Geological Survey. Of these, eleven has clearly reached peak production and are now declining. Several more may be peaking or be close to peaking. Furthermore the Hubbert model for peak oil seemed to fit these other minerals as well.

U.S. imports of these minerals continue to grow. Some alternative energy technologies such as fuel cells require rare minerals. Any planning for the future that does consider resource limitations is certain to fail. Conservation and recycling of these minerals--efforts that will need to be planned in to any future use--are the only ways around an otherwise disastrous collapse.

The Limits of Biofuels

The use of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels has exploded in the last few years, as oil production has plateaued. In the past six years the amount of land devoted to biofuels has risen from 12 million hectares to 80 million hectares.

At the same time world population continues to grow by 70 million a year while countries like India and China are increasingly switching to a higher protein, meat diet that requires more grain. The result has been soaring commodity prices, threatening more vulnerable regions of the world with the risk of food shortages.

Demand for biofuels has also resulted in charges of human rights abuses. A report by Friends of the Earth and indigenous rights groups claims that millions of hectares of Indonesian forests have been cleared to meet the growing demand for palm oil. As many as 90 million indigenous peoples who rely on the forests are losing their land to the palm oil companies. The report charges that the companies often use violent tactics to force natives off their land.

The push for biofuels began with a laudable desire to decrease use of oil and reduce carbon emissions, but the results show that present methods of producing biofuels soon run into serious human and environmental costs. This alternative to oil is already reaching its limits.

Coal Supply Squeeze

Recent cold weather around the world has put a squeeze on coal supplies, sending prices upward. The rare snowfall in Baghdad reflected a bitter cold snap across much of Asia and Europe. As a result, coal stocks in China have dwindled to emergency levels, possibly a foretaste of things to come. In spite of having massive coal reserves, China became a net importer of coal in 2007. China and India are expected to need 170 million metric tonnes of imports by 2030.

Power shortages in recently shut production at coal mines in South Africa, supplier of a quarter of Europe's energy coal, while rains disrupted mining in Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter, sending prices soaring. In addition, U.S. coal shipments were cut in the beginning of January when a pier in the Port of Baltimore partially collapsed.

These developments only highlight the limits of coal supply, which until recently had been expected to last for centuries. Estimates of global coal resources have been downgraded from 10 trillion tons in 1980 to around 4.5 trillion tons in 2005. In Germany and the U.K., estimates of coal reserves have been revised downward by 90%.

A paper by the Energy Watch Group earlier this year concluded that supply data was of poor quality, pointing to the regular downgrading of reserve estimates. In the United States, declining production of the highest quality coal has meant that, in terms of energy production, U.S. coal is already in decline. Production worldwide is expected to grow for another 10 to 15 years before going into permanent decline.

Rail Revival?

Railroads are posed to stage a comeback. U.S. railroad miles peaked at 380,000 in 1920s, then went into decline as the interstate highway system and the motor carrier industry provided competition. By 2006, railroads had abandoned nearly 70% of its track, with only 120,000 miles of track left.

Recently, however, rail transport has been making something of a comeback, as rising fuel prices, concern over global warming and fuel supplies, and traffic congestion, have brought energy efficiency to the fore. A 2000 study by the Oak Ridge national Laboratory found that intercity rail was the second most efficient mode of passenger traffic, surpassed only by intercity bus service.

This month, the national Surface transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission recommended a $357.2 billion investment in rail by 2050 to significantly expand intercity passenger rail service by 2050, citing safety, energy efficiency, and as an alternative to driving.

At the same time, other countries are exploring even more energy efficient forms of rail travel. Earlier this year Japan unveiled a clean energy hybrid prototype that uses a battery powered motor at low speeds. Japan has plans to run a hybrid tram in Tokyo, although they are still trying to modify and improve the hybrid train's performance.

In the U.S., a popular program in recent years has been the rails-to-trails movement that has converted abandoned railway right of ways into bicycle and hiking trails. But with the resurgence of interest in rail traffic, rails-to-trails has come into conflict with possible future rail development. In California, a long planned coastal hiking a and biking trail, envisioned as an alternative to auto traffic, has run into a roadblock as the state transportation agency--trying to balance the demands on the rail corridor--waits for rail plans that could include a high speed train system reaching from Sacramento to San Diego.

Although these developments are largely under the radar now, rail transportation is very likely to become increasingly important in the future as an efficient alternative to highway traffic.

Rainwater Management and Harvesting

With the increasing frequency and severity of droughts, compounded by growing population and urbanization, the issue of water management and rainwater harvesting are receiving more attention. Projections that two thirds of the world's population will be affected by water scarcity in coming decades make the issue particularly urgent.

A paper by the Stockholm International Water Institute divides water scarcity into three categories; demand driven (use to availability), population driven (water crowding), or temporary scarcity (drought).

Demand driven scarcity can be mitigated by reducing wasteful water use—cutting leaks in supply systems, losses in irrigation, reducing excessive household use, and cleaning up pollution.

Population driven scarcity requires reallocation, raw water transfers from other basins, water desalination, the use of groundwater through pipelines, and bulk water imports.

Temporary scarcity can be mitigated by water storage, resource allocation, rainwater harvesting, and the use of terracing in irrigated agriculture.

Water shortages around the world today tend to involve a combination of these factors as population increase, industrial development and climate change combine to stress existing water systems. Paved surface areas in growing urban areas increase the amount of water that flows directing into streams, reducing the amount refreshing aquifers. Demand increases while local supplies are stressed.

The situation in the U.S. Southeast and Southwest are slightly different. The Southeast, accustomed to plentiful rainwater, now finds itself in a record drought, having to cut back on traditionally higher levels of water usage. The Southwest, with fewer water resources, began with lower water usage per capita, but population growth and a stubborn drought, also finds its water resources strained. Urbanization aggravates the problem in both areas.

Urban runoff problems can be reduced through the use of raingardens and green roofs which reduce rainwater runoff by collecting and storing stormwater so that it can infiltrate the soil. These methods also reduce the amount of pollutants that are washed into rivers and lakes.

Rainwater harvesting collects rainwater in containers of various sizes, from rain barrels attached to gutter downspouts, to much larger containers geared toward supplying landscape irrigation needs.

In the southwest, rangelands of scrub brush, grasslands, marsh areas and deserts are common environments. Here, around forty percent of all rainwater evaporates directly back into the atmosphere, while only a little over one percent recharges aquifers. Proper management of the rangelands can have a major impact on the amount of water available for human use.

Worldwide, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), best known for its programs to help cities reduce their global warming emissions, launched a water campaign in June, 2000, to work with local governments to reduce water consumption, pollution, and systems loss. The campaign has been particularly successful in Australia, in response to the record droughts of recent years. Some localities now have extensive rainwater harvesting programs, expanding the use of collected water to toilets and other uses.

More public education is needed as water stresses continue to grow in coming years.

Resource exhaustion--the human price

Richard Heinberg's new book, Peak Everything, expands on the widely discussed possibility that we are reaching the world's peak potential for oil production, suggesting that other critical metals are approaching peak as well, including copper, platinum, silver, gold, and zinc. At the same time, the U.S. has become ever more dependent on mineral imports, with the value of mineral imports increasing from $4 billion in 1993 to $29 billion in 2000.

Constant exploitation has exhausted the richest ore deposits. Just as one example, U.S. copper mines in the 1920s worked with copper ores as rich as 20 to 30%. By 2000, copper ores of 0.3% to 1% were being mined.

The combination of increasing demand with declining yields has resulted in an ever growing pressure on developing countries to open up potential mining areas to access by western companies--many of which are located in indigenous or tribal areas. Anthropologist John Bodley, quoted in Resource Rebels, bluntly states that;

The disappearance of tribal cultures over much of the world in the past 150 years can be seen as the direct result of government policies designed to facilitate the exploitation of tribal resources for the health of industrial civilization.

Last week, I visited a gold mine site in Honduras that exemplifies many of the problems resulting from the pressures to produce more ore from poorer deposits. The San Martin Mine in the Siria Valley, operated by the Canadian company, Goldcorp, has been producing around one gram of gold ore per metric tonne of rock mined. Achieving this requires blasting half of a mountain into rubble, grinding the rock into finer pieces and then pouring a solution of water and cyanide over the resulting piles to leach the gold from the rock.

Cyanide leach mining has a history of disastrous accidents. A spill in Romania in 2000 resulted in dead rivers and polluted lands. In 1995, a tailings pond at the Omai mine in Guyana, gave way, spilling more than 800 million gallons of wastewater laced with cyanide and heavy metals into Guyana's biggest river, resulting in a major environmental disaster. Accidents such as these have lead the state of Montana to outlaw cyanide leach mining, with other state and national governments attempting to follow suit.

None of this has stopped mining companies from pursuing new ventures, such as the San Martin Mine mine. The mine began production in 2000. Indigenous villages in the area were moved to other land owned by the company and given fake land titles. Health problems soon appeared due to the blasting which spread dust contaminated with heavy metals into nearby villages. Over the years the mine has been in operation, nearby inhabitants have experienced a variety of skin and bronchial ailments. The incidence of miscarriage and birth defects has risen.

On top of medical problems, the mine's tremendous demand for water has dried up streams in the area, forcing the natives to rely on drilled wells, many of which have proven to be contaminated by heavy metal residues from the mine.

Honduran activists who have worked for mining reforms have had their lives threatened and their investigations blocked. In January 2005, the Honduran Office of the Special Prosecutor on the Environment called for a judicial investigation of the company for environmental crimes, forest crimes and water usurpation, but nothing has come of this.

The Honduran mine is scheduled to be closed in a few years, however Goldcorp has opened a new mine in Guatemala that is already showing some of the same problems experienced by the San Martin Mine.

I think it is important for people in developed countries to put a human face on the sacrifices made by indigenous peoples in the mad scramble to feed the ever growing appetite for raw materials. It presents yet another reason to work for a more sustainable, less wasteful economy.

Climate Change and Drought in the U.S.

Over the past five years the entire southern half of the United States has had to deal with record droughts, though the circumstances have varied by region. The Southwest has experienced a nearly continuous dry spell. Texas went through one of its worst droughts on record in 2005 and 2006 only to be inundated this year; and the Southeast, which was drenched by a record hurricane season in 2005, is now experiencing an exceptional drought that has left many areas with only a few months of water supply on hand. All of these droughts are aggravated by the population growth that the sunbelt has experienced in recent decades.

Unlike the Southwest, which where a desert conditions have always required water planning, the Southeast now finds itself with dangerously low water supplies and no backup plan should the drought continue. Only Florida has passed a water plan. Atlanta's population has tripled since 1960; Georgia's water use increased by 30 percent between 1990 and 2000 alone--but its response to the worst drought on record has been surprisingly slow, typified by the plans at one outdoor theme park to build a 1.2 million gallon mountain of snow on a day when temperatures reached 81 degrees.

The American Southwest, more accustomed to dry conditions, has a better track record of water management; but this region finds changing weather patterns rendering their old assumptions obsolete.

The great dam and reservoir projects of the twentieth century gave the region a half century of surplus capacity, allowing agriculture to flourish and cities to expand. Now that surplus is gone--every drop is already allocated--and a persistent drought is threatening to deplete existing supplies. At the same time global warming is melting the mountain snow packs that provide a major source of fresh water.

Cities in the Southwest are now scrambling to find ways to conserve and reuse water supplies. The city of Aurora, Colorado has pioneered a method of installing wells downstream from their wastewater plants to retrieve the water, purify it and reuse it the first such closed loop in the U.S.

In the long run, however, there is little that can be done to support ever increasing populations in the U.S. South especially when one considers that the South lies astride the 30th parallel, where many of the Earth's deserts exist, due to air currents that rise at the equator and descend at the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Climate models project that these areas will get even dryer. What we are seeing now may be the leading edge of that trend. In any event, the rapid population growth of the sunbelt states is likely to hit a roadblock in the imminent future.

Localization: Some Success Stories

There are a number of important examples of economies going local, either out of necessity or desire. Most of these are in lesser developed countries but even in the U.S., quality local foods are making headway against the long distance food chains.

Perhaps the best known of these efforts was the adoption of urban agriculture in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union cut off most of that country's oil and food imports. As seen in the movie The Power of Community, Cuba turned to urban farming, cleaning up idle land in the cities to use as gardens. Helped by Australian permaculturists, who set up the Foundation for Nature and Humanity, urban gardening quickly spread to rooftops, patios and raised garden beds on parking lots. The loss of oil forced them to turn to bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers. Now Havana produces half of all the vegetables it consumes within the city limits, while other towns and cities produce all that they need. This produce is sold in newly allowed private markets that provide a thriving, year round business.

India has several examples of communal businesses that have spread across the country. Vanda Shiva describes an organization of women who make the Indian snack Lijjat Papad. Growing out of a small group of women in Gurgaum looking for a source of income, the organization now has 63 branches around the country, and 3 billion rupees in yearly sales. What is most remarkable is that the organization has no hierarchy or leadership, but rather considers itself a family and even a place of worship, built around the principles of common ownership, non-discrimination, voluntarism, autonomy, and ethical business practices.

Another self-organized business, the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association, delivers 175,000 lunch boxes each day over 28 miles of public transportation. Raghunath Maharaj, its president, claims that, "No one in the association is an employee or employer, all are partners and all are co-owners." The delivery network consists of decentralized units of 15 to 25 individuals, which rely on a coding system that tells where each tiffin box was picked up, the originating and destination stations, and the address to which it is delivered. Once a month, the association holds a meeting to resolve disputes and problems.

In the U.S. the beginnings of a relocalization can be seen in the recent growth in the number of farmers markets, consumer supported agriculture, and in campaigns such as the "100 Mile Diet." While especially strong in California--the bay area alone has some 90 farmers markets--the growth of these markets is a nationwide phenomena. Nationwide, the number of markets has tripled in the last decade to nearly 4,500 with over a billion dollars in yearly sales.

The pressure of necessity has forces dramatic moves toward local, environmentally sustainable economies in some parts of the world. Even iU.S., where necessity is still a haunting future reality, a growing awareness of our limits is bringing the beginnings of a return to local economic organization.

Grain Stockpiles Shrink to 30 Year Low

For most of this decade, grain production has failed to keep up with demand. Climate change, the growing affluence of the developing world, and, more recently, the demand for biofuels have all combined to steadily shrink stockpiles.

This year wheat production has taken a blow from bad weather that has resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the expected crop in Australia, and a 6 percent drop in Canada, two of the world's major exporters. As a result, wheat prices have climbed past $9 a bushel for the first time ever.

India which was self sufficient in wheat until 2006, expects to import 5 million tons this year.

The situation is likely to get worse in coming years. According to the World Bank, 15 percent of the world's food supplies, feeding 160 million people, depend on water being drawn from rapidly depleting underground sources or overused rivers that are drying up.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that climate change could cut the output from rain dependent agriculture in half by 2020. A study by Dalhouse University projects that present fishing levels will deplete all commercial species by 2048.

All of this will be aggravated by shrinking oil production and ever increasing energy prices.

"Less and local" will likely be forced upon us as the only sustainable path we have.